On 8 January, 1817 she was married by her parents to the 56-year-old General Kern, whom she professed to detest thoroughly

After they settled in Saint Petersburg, Anna flirted with a number of Romantic poets, but her chief claim to fame was a love affair with Alexander Pushkin in summer 1825, during her stay with relatives in Trigorskoe, a manor adjacent to Mikhailovskoe